The Chemickal Marriage

revolver, and from a pocket he retrieved a fistful of brass.
    ‘No work in the city anywhere,’ offered Mr Brine.
    Svenson nodded, slotting in the new shells. ‘But when exactly did the Xonck works close?’
    ‘After we returned, some three weeks now.’ Phelps patted his coat and looked behind them. ‘My weapon is in the river.’
    ‘It cannot be helped,’ said Svenson. ‘But before this recent stoppage, did not the people of Raaxfall enjoy near total employment? The marriage between a crocodile and the birds that pick its teeth?’
    ‘You can imagine the wages Henry Xonck would pay – they will have no savings to last out one bare week, let alone three.’
    The Doctor sighed. ‘You are right, of course … yet I cannot credit poverty with such an unprovoked attack. On strangers, no less – on a woman!’
    ‘Why should you think it unprovoked?’ asked Miss Temple. The three men turned to her in silence. At once she flushed. ‘Do not be absurd. I did nothing but stand in the air!’
    ‘Then what do you imply?’ asked Phelps.
    ‘I do not know – but perhaps there is more to their discontent than we understand.’
    ‘Perhaps. And perhaps this same mob tore your Mr Ramper to pieces in the street.’
    They climbed rusted stairs and met another wall of iron bars. The Xonck works were a honeycomb of huts and roads, bristling with towers and catwalks. It was divided by earthen redoubts and moats of sickly green liquid and caged blast tunnels, the earth around each entrance black as coal.
    ‘The lock is on the other side,’ Svenson said, slapping a wide metal plate. ‘Nothing to pick or even to shoot open. We need a field gun.’
    ‘There must be someone within,’ observed Phelps.
    ‘No one especially
mindful
,’ said Miss Temple. ‘We are veritable tradesmen at the door.’
    ‘We might climb,’ offered Mr Brine, pointing up. The fence was ten feet high, topped with sharp spikes.
    ‘Surely not,’ said Phelps.
    Miss Temple went onto her toes to peer through the bars. ‘Do you see that barge?’
    Svenson screwed his monocle in place. ‘What about it?’
    ‘Was it not at the Parchfeldt Canal?’ she asked. ‘I recognize the rings of red paint around the mast.’
    ‘Perhaps it came from Parchfeldt with the machines.’
    Miss Temple turned to Phelps. ‘From the river here, could one reach the Orange Canal – and Harschmort?’
    Phelps nodded. His hair was plastered to his skull, and Miss Temple saw that the man was shivering. ‘But if they have gone to so much trouble, where
is
everyone? What is more, if the people of Raaxfall are so exercised against the factory, what has stopped them from storming it? Not their own reticence, I am sure, yet – no, no! What is this?’
    His last words were petulantly addressed to Mr Brine, who had nimbly clambered halfway up the fence.
    ‘Mr Brine,’ Miss Temple called. ‘There are spikes.’
    ‘Not to worry, miss.’ Brine gathered himself just beneath the spikes, curling his legs, then recklessly sprung over them, slamming into the other side of the fence with a clang. Miss Temple gasped, for a spike had gouged through his sleeve.
    ‘Not to worry,’ he repeated, and lifted the arm free. Brine landed with a solid
thump
on the other side.
    ‘Well
done
!’ cried Miss Temple.
    ‘Is there a lock?’ called Svenson. ‘Can you –’
    Before Mr Brine could reply, he was surrounded by a dozen sudden lines of jetting smoke, each lancing towards him with a serpentine hiss. Brine staggered, eyes wide with shock, then toppled off the platform and out of sight.
    Miss Temple had the sense not to scream, and instead found that she – like both men – had dropped to her knees.
    ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘Where is he?’
    ‘Is he killed?’ asked Phelps.
    She quite quickly began to climb, fitting her feet like a ladder.
    ‘Good God!’ cried Phelps.
    Both men reached for her legs but Miss Temple kicked at their hands.
    ‘He will die if I do not help him.’
    ‘He is dead already!’ called Phelps.
    ‘Celeste,’ whispered Svenson. She was too high to pull down without causing her harm. ‘It is a trap. Think – you render Brine’s sacrifice without purpose –’
    ‘But we cannot go back!’ she hissed.
    ‘Celeste –’
    ‘
No
.’
    ‘You are being stubborn.’
    The fence seemed higher from the top than it had from below. Brine’s strategy to reach the other side would not work for her – she’d not the strength, nor would her